A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy by Laurence Sterne

STERNE, Laurence. A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy … with Illustrations by Polia Chentoff. Paris, The Black Sun Press, Éditions Narcisse, 1929.

One of the original 400 copies of Sterne’s first-person account of the exploits of a British tourist, the first edition with several illustrations, including five full plates, by the Russian artist Polia Chentoff.

Laurence Sterne was an Irish-born English novelist and humourist of the eighteenth century, perhaps best known for his novel A Sentimental Journey (1768), ‘a light-hearted comedy of moral sentiments’ (Britannica).

The Black Sun Press was an English-language publishing house based in Paris. Founded in 1927 by American expatriates Harry and Caresse Crosby, it published the early works of influential literary figures such as Joyce, Pound, Eliot, Crane, D. H. Lawrence, and Hemingway. The books, all handset, were typographically impeccable and beautifully bound. The Black Sun Press closed in 1970, following Caresse Crosby’s death.

Octavo, pp. 191, edges untrimmed; a clean copy in the original printed wrappers with fold-over flaps enclosed in a glassine dust jacket, with the publisher’s green and gold paper-covered slipcase (glassine dust jacket browned at spine and chipped at head and tail with some loss, slipcase slightly worn, oxidised, and split at top edge).

Minkoff A-22.